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Language Use in a Branching Universe

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Language Use in a Branching Universe Language use in a branching Universe David Wallace ∗ December 2005 Abstract I investigate the consequences for semantics, and in particular for the semantics of tense, if time is assumed to have a branching structure not out of metaphysical necessity (to solve some philosophical problem) but just as a contingent physical fact, as is suggested by a currently-popular approach to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. 1 Introduction Aristotle thought that the future was open, in the sense that talk of the future need be neither true nor false. Prior (1957,1967) modelled this openness by giving time a branching structure and constructing a branching-time semantics to match. Thomason (1970), McCall (1984, 1994), Belnap (1992, 2002), and others concur. In each case their motivation is that certain aspects of our everyday world, and our discourse about it, can be modelled only by branching time and branching-time semantics: examples include causality, the objectivity of possibility and probability, free will, and the intuition to say of things not yet determined that they are neither true nor false. But it is, I think, at least as widely believed that such a radical metaphysical strategy is unnecessary, and that our everyday interactions with time can be understood perfectly well on the conventional picture of time as non-branching. If so (and I am myself inclined to think that it is so), philosophy gives us no reason to take seriously the proposal that time is branching, or to adopt a semantics of tense which explicitly accommodates branching. However, it is a non sequitur to suppose that because we are not compelled to accept a non-branching structure for time, it is not philosophically possible to accept one. This paper is concerned with what semantics we should adopt for tensed discourse in a universe in which branching is in fact ubiquitous: its conclusion is that if we live in a branching universe, we are required to adopt a branching semantics. Why take such a supposition seriously in the first place? One important reason is that ‘new developments in physics’ do indeed give us (some) grounds ∗Balliol College, Oxford OX1 3BJ, U. K. Email: [email protected] 1 to suspect that time may be branching. In particular, the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics (often called the ‘Many-Worlds theory’) makes precisely that claim: it supposes that whenever we make a measurement of a quantum system1 the Universe splits into many copies, one2 for each possible outcome of the experiment. It is not my purpose here to argue for the truth of the Everett interpretation (for such arguments, see Wallace (2002, 2003a, 2003b) ). However, true or not, it is now taken seriously by remarkably many physicists. As such, philosophers have some obligation to ask, if not is it true, then at least could it be true? That is, is it a possible physical theory, albeit one which could turn out false? Or is it metaphysically incoherent, something to be rejected out of hand without further ado? One of the more powerful arguments for metaphysical incoherence3 is: how can it make sense to say, as we habitually do, that we are uncertain of the result of a quantum measurement when in fact the Everett interpretation tells us with certainty that the result is a division of the universe into many copies? That is, how can we reconcile the apparently indeterministic nature of quantum measure- ments with the apparently deterministic, in-principle-perfectly-knowable nature of the Everett interpretation? To expand on the point: suppose an experimenter, asked what he believes the result of the experiment will be, says ‘Either outcome A or outcome B will occur, but not both, and I don’t know which.’ This statement (a perfectly normal response for an experimenter who accepts quantum mechanics) can be construed as the assertion of • ‘A will occur or B will occur’, and • ‘Not both A and B will occur’ together with a refusal to assert either • ‘A will occur’ or • ‘B will occur’. However, if quantum mechanics is supposed to mean that the world branches in two, with A occurring in one branch and B in the other, it’s unclear how this can be a reasonable set of assertions to make. Do we take A to occur if it occurs in some branch (that is, somewhere in the branching Universe)? Then it cannot be true that not both A and B will occur, nor can it make sense to plead ignorance as to which will occur (they both will). Or should we take A to occur if it occurs period, not just occurs-in-some-branch? If so, neither A nor B 1And at many other times when measurement is not occurring, too — one of the appealing features of the Everett interpretation is that ‘measurement’ plays no essential role in its formulation. 2Rather more than one, actually; but counting branches is a subtle matter. See Wallace (2003b) for more discussion of this point. 3Made with some force by Albert and Loewer (1988), amongst others. 2 occurs; rather, some alien branching event occurs. Either way, the theory seems to fit very badly with how experimental physicists actually behave. Responses to this objection have generally taken one of two forms: either bite the bullet and accept that we are just wrong when we say that a quantum- mechanical experiment has an unknown outcome, but try to argue that our behaviour should remain unchanged nonetheless (Greaves 2004); or try to make sense of the apparent paradox by appeal to considerations from the philosophy of personal identity (Saunders 1998). I wish to suggest an alternative possibility: that the ‘paradox’ is a consequence of mistakes in the philosophy of language. In particular, it is due to the mistaken application of a semantic theory designed for a non-branching universe to the discourse of the inhabitants of a branching universe. In section 2 I review the semantics of linear and branching time; in section 3 I apply each to a branching universe, and show that linear, but not branching, semantics imply that if we live in a branching universe then nearly all our beliefs are trivial, false or meaningless. Section 4 makes the central claim of this paper: that the linguistic principle of charity entails that branching semantics are correct for a branching universe. Section 5 addresses the frequently made objection that talk of ‘uncertainty’, which applies to a branching universe if branching-time semantics are appropriate, is incoherent in situations where all the objective facts are known. Section 6–8 develop the technical details of the proposal, and section 9 is the conclusion. 2 Branching-time semantics: a review Suppose that time is linear: that is, suppose that it can be represented as some total ordering < on some set T of ‘times’, to be read as “earlier than”.4 Ut- terances concerned with time can then be divided in to two classes: tenseless utterances, such as “p occurs (tenselessly) before q” or “p (tenselessly) occurs at some time t”, the truth values of which are unaffected by when they are uttered; and tensed utterances, such as “p has happened” or “q is (now) hap- pening”, which are true at one time, false at another. Put in terms of sentences rather than utterances: tenseless sentences (ignoring ambiguity) are true or false simpliciter, tensed sentences have time-dependent truth values. There is a well-known relationship between the two sorts of utterance: namely, a tensed utterance made at a particular time t ∈ T is true iff a certain related tenseless utterance is true simpliciter. For instance, the tensed utterance “p will happen”, uttered at time t, is true iff “p happens (tenselessly) at some time s > t” is true; “p is (now) happening”, uttered at t, is true iff ‘p (tenselessly) happens at t” is true. In terms of sentences: each ordered pair of a tensed sentence and a time determines a tenseless sentence; the tensed sentence is true at that time iff the tenseless sentence is true simpliciter. 4Recall that a total ordering of T is an antisymmetric, irreflexive transitive relation on T such that for any x, y ∈ T , either x = y, x < y, or x > y. 3 Those, such as Prior (1957, 1967), who take tense as metaphysically funda- mental will, at best, regard this relation between tensed and tenseless sentences as in some sense definitional of the latter; they might wish to go further and reject the framework above altogether (or at least regard it as giving merely the abstract model theory for the logic of tensed utterances). I regard this as untenable, for unoriginal reasons5, and for the rest of this paper I follow Mellor (1981, 1998) et al in regarding the content of tensed utterances as exhausted by an explication of their time-dependent relation to tenseless truthmakers. What if time is not linear, but branching? Formally, this can be modelled by relaxing the requirement that the relation < on the set T is a total ordering. We require instead only that it be a partial ordering6 which in addition satisfies: 1. Connectedness: For any x, y, either x < y, or y < x, or x = y, or for some z, z < x and z < y. 2. No recombination: If z < x and y < x, then either z < y, or y < z, or y = z. Branching structures for time were proposed by Prior (1957) with the intent of formalising the intuition that (some) future events are not now either true or false. On the branching-time semantics that Prior advocates, a future-tensed sentence (say, ‘There will be a sea battle’, to borrow Aristotle’s example) uttered at t is true iff there is a sea-battle in all branches futurewards of t; false iff there is a sea-battle in no such branch; neither true nor false otherwise.
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